Art and Computer games

[andrewducker]

If we take as a starting point that art is "a designed experience which evokes emotion*", then I think that most games focus on "excitement" as the only emotion they care about.  As most highbrow people would tend to look down on that particular emotion, it's not going to persuade them over computer games artiness.

Most games don't go much further than that - but I've certainly been made happy, sad, afraid, and thoroughly involved by computer games.  They haven't, generally, been as good as movies at doing so, because excitement is so much easier for computer games designers to focus on, and the bits which produce other emotions tend to be quite filmlike or booklike (depending on whether they are produced by reading dialogue or watching a cut-scene).

My definition du jour of "game" is "a process which provides a challenge for a person to overcome".  If you're choosing between options which provide multiple equally "good" solutions (i.e. dialogue trees that don't affect your success level), are they really part of the game?  So we're left with two parts of computer games - the bits which are challenges to be overcome (which can produce excitement and feelings of achievement), and the bits which are evoking other emotions.  If you exclude those two emotions from the range which count as proper art then computer games are a mixture of interactive art and game, without any crossover.  If you do include them, then games are definitely art.

If, of course, your definitions of "art" and "games" are different to mine, which they probably will be, as I only made mine up half an hour ago, then your conclusions will be different.  There are a bunch of definitions of "game" <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game#Definitions">here</A> and art <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art#Definition_of_the_term">here</A>.

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I probably spend a ridiculous amount of time wondering what Art is. I think that what I value in art, though perhaps there is art which does not have this, is the expansion of the concepts and models which I use to experience the world. So, just a silly example, once I had seen 18th century paintings of skies, I looked at the real sky in new ways. Or, once I had read TS Eliot I thought about time in new ways. Not just new but enhanced. So, the purpose of experiencing art to me is not jut the transient emotion of the experience, but the permanent increase in the depth and complexity of my thoughts. I don't know whether people get this from games. As I say, this isn't a definition of 'art' but of what I most value in art.

of course, also you want lots of possible types of art, so you have lots of types of ways of thinking to choose between

[blearyboy.livejournal.com]

Art is better understood as a value rather than a binary state. That's why the "Is it art?" conversation never works out. "To what degree is it art?" is a better question. You could argue (successfully) that the Jeremy Kyle Show is art, but its artistic worth is clearly a lot less than Henry V or The Last Supper.

And with all due deference to the good people of Wikipedia, saying that art is "a designed experience which evokes emotion" is a rubbish definition. Poking someone in the eye is a designed experience which evokes emotion. All novels, movies, songs, paintings, whatever, prompt some kind of emotional response (even if it's boredom or irritation). The difference between art and entertainment is that entertainment stops at that initial response; art remains with the audience after the experience has ended.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I'd certainly argue that games provoke/invoke a lot more emotions than excitement and achievement; a great many games have made me feel awe (would you kindly refer back to Bioshock's big reveal?), fear (the first Aliens vs. Predator game had me gibbering like Hudson in the Marine campaign), protectiveness (Tali ain't dyin' in no duct in *my* Mass Effect 2 even if "I" have to wade through fire), frustration (too many to name)... all as intended experiences. People sometimes get attached to game characters; witness fanfiction, or the popularity of Nintendogs.

-- Steve has great respect for Roger Ebert as a film critic, but zero respect for his analyses of games. (The irony being that Ebert is making many of the same mistakes that theatre critics did a century ago when panning the naescent film industry as a mere diversion from artistic pursuits...)

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

I prefer Frank Zappa's definition: art is something that someone puts inside a frame and calls art. (Of course, whether it is any good or not is a separate, and more difficult, question.)

The frame is the important bit, and need not be literal. For example, Zappa goes on to define music as a series of vibrations in the atmosphere that start at a particular time and stop at a particular time.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Yes, but fuck Ebert in his stupid ear.

Games have deliberately and with malice aforethought evoked emotions like joy, fear, wonder, awe, lust, shock. And lots of the mathematical wonder/curiosity I also enjoy in minimalist art or sculpture, say.

It also helps if you play a lot of games. My experience of Call of Duty or Portal would not have been the same if they were my first FPS. Similarly, I wouldn't get the same kick out of Lynch if I didn't have at least a basic understanding of some of the themes, particularly as presented in cinema, such as infidelity and deception.

Which leads to an interesting conclusion. Good art needs bad art.

[broin.livejournal.com]

http://www.pelulamu.net/countercomplex/computationally-minimal-art/

"Today, on the other hand, immense and virtually non-limiting amounts of computing capacity are available for practically everyone who desires it, so computational minimalism is nearly always a conscious choice. There are, therefore, clear differences in how the low complexity has been dealt with in different eras and disciplines."